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Dirty Dining: Mayuri Indian Restaurant shut down by state for almost 48 hours for roach activity

Wendy Ryan

11:04 PM, Jan 15, 2013

2:38 PM, Jan 17, 2013

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Food safety inspectors shut down Mayuri Indian Restaurant for more than 24 hours in December because of live roaches in the kitchen. But the last year has been challenging as well, with 46 critical violations and 142 non-critical violations.

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Mayari Indian Restaurant in Temple Terrace, Fla.

WFTS

Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright 2010 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

TEMPLE TERRACE, Fla. - Dozens and dozens of flies nibbling on old food is not the company you'd want to keep but that's what we found in the back of Mayuri Indian Restaurant on North 56th Street in Temple Terrace.

The insects were swarming around an open dumpster, a repeat violation found by the state.

"We had a problem, but we fixed it," said Venkat Venumula, part owner of Mayuri for more than three years.

"Can you tell us what happened and if you've cleaned the place up?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah, we cleaned up everything good," Venumula said.

What did he clean up? Roaches in the kitchen.

On December 10, inspectors shut down the restaurant for almost 48 hours after seeing live roaches near the cook's line, dead roaches in the reach-in cooler, and a roach trap with even more dead insects.

"Were you aware that you had a roach problem?" asked Ryan.

"No, before we didn't have any problem," he responded.

Venumula says the roaches came from a delivery box from an outside vendor that got into the kitchen.

But it wasn't Mayuri's first run-in with food safety inspectors. Over the last 15 months, the state required six follow-up inspections and wrote up 46 critical violations and a high number of non-critical violations at 142.

Some of those critical issues included food stored on the floor, food not properly date-marked and older than 24 hours, and food thawed in standing water.

"Do you have new training under way where you're teaching your employees?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah, everything is all good," Venumula explained.

"Did you have to retrain some of these employees after seeing these reports?" Ryan went on to inquire.

"Yeah," he responded.

Venumula also says he wants customers to know the building is old but his restaurant is clean and up to code.

"So you feel like the kitchen is safe and the place is clean?" asked Ryan.

"Yes," said Venumula.

Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.